


Madness and Soil

by mikripetra



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Fix-It of Sorts, Fluff, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Introspection, M/M, Nico Feels, Non-Linear Narrative, Panic Attacks, Past Jason Grace/Piper McLean, Post-The Blood of Olympus (Heroes of Olympus), Protective Jason Grace, gratuitous odyssey quotes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:28:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22560985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikripetra/pseuds/mikripetra
Summary: Jason's glasses are always crooked.Nico can't stop staring at them.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Jason Grace
Comments: 24
Kudos: 199





	Madness and Soil

**Author's Note:**

> In the madness and soil  
> Of that sad, earthly scene  
> Only then I am human  
> Only then I am clean
> 
> -Hozier, “Take Me to Church”

Jason’s glasses are always crooked.

It doesn’t make sense- but, Nico, supposes, it really does.

Nico’s fingers twitch. He reaches out, stops right in front of those blue, blue eyes and the confused stammering and straightens them. He hesitates, his fingertips still on the brim- he doesn’t want to let go. The air is so, so thick, but not with magic. This is no Mist or overwhelming godly presence sending out waves of anxiety and fear-

_Stay away, stay away, stay **away** -_

No, this is something else. It stops Nico in his tracks. He doesn’t know what to do, but he doesn’t want it to stop. So he stands there (idiot, _idiot_ ) with his fingertips on Jason’s glasses and his feet pushed up so his weight is on his tiptoes and his lungs full of air that can’t move in or out.

Nico feels like he’s high. Jason smiles, and the world becomes bursts of comfortingly powerful color.

“Thanks,” Jason murmurs, his eyes not accusatory, but filled to the brim with warmth and affection. Nico doesn’t know what to do with that.

He drops his eyes to the ground. He nods once, and hurries away.

He thinks he hears Jason calling after him. But Nico has lived long enough in the land of half-formed dreams and irresistible illusions to know it’s just wishful thinking.

* * *

Will Solace is like Jason, but not.

He’s so persistent. He’s kind, and obstinate, and full of the belief that he can fix everyone, and Nico hates it.

Will Solace is the sun. Everyone says Nico should spend more time with him, but it just makes him ache all over.

Nico doesn’t spend three days in the infirmary like Will asks. He goes, once, filled with some strange combination of dread and expectation. Will lights up when he sees Nico standing there, but it’s fleeting. He gets pulled away within seconds to help some other soul, body torn to shreds.

Nico watches for a moment, in the room but very much outside of it. Will’s current patient makes a pained whimper as Will resets his dislocated shoulder.

The people here aren’t dying. It makes Nico’s skin itch.

He leaves without a word, and Will does not call after him.

For some reason, he’s happy about that.

He knows how to function when he’s being ignored.

* * *

When Nico shuffles his way to the campfire, coat drawn tight around his shoulders despite the muggy heat of September, Jason’s already there.

He’s talking animatedly with Hestia, oblivious to his friends trying to catch his eye. He’s like a little kid hopped up on sugar. Something twists in Nico’s heart.

He moves over to where Jason and the goddess are sitting, perching gingerly on the edge of the wooden bench.

“Oh, hey Nico!” Jason grins, not at all startled by his sudden appearance. “This is Fotia. She’s new.”

Nico glances at the goddess, his eyebrows curving downward. She smiles, slightly, and places a finger to her lips. Her eyes glow much brighter than the embers still burning in the firepit.

“Why were you talking to her?” Nico asks Jason, long after the goddess has made herself scarce.

Jason looks startled by the question. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“She’s not new,” Nico explains slowly. “She’s been here longer than I have. People just...don’t think she’s worth talking to. She tends to fade into the background.”

Jason blinks, nonplussed. “Well that’s stupid.”

Nico can’t help it. He cracks up laughing.

* * *

Percy corners him a few days after he decides to stay.

Nico braces himself, his eyes on the treetops.

“Are you okay?”

Nico’s eyes dart to Percy’s face. “What?”

Percy isn’t smiling his crooked smile. He doesn’t look prideful, or offended, or angry. He’s concerned.

Nico doesn’t know what to say.

He can’t meet Percy’s eyes. Who came up with the idea that blue eyes were the “piercing” ones? Jason’s eyes make Nico feel safe. Green eyes make him feel uncomfortable, exposed, like his skin has been flayed open to reveal all his darkest thoughts.

“Nico, I…”

“You what?” Nico snaps, harsher than he means to, all his false bravado from his confession wiped away to reveal the ugliness beneath.

“I just…”

It’s strange, seeing Percy lost for words. Nico doesn’t know what to do with this new Percy, the one with darkness behind his eyes and a tattoo on his arm and wheezing in his lungs and fear in his spine.

“If you ever need anything,” Percy begins, spreading his hands, “or- or if you ever want anything- this is coming out wrong. I just want you to know that- that I’m here for you. If you ever need help. Or want to talk.”

Nico blinks, slowly. “Why?”

Percy tilts his head, like he’s confused. “Because we’re friends, Nico. I want you to be alright.”

Nico resists the childish shout bubbling up in his throat. _No you don’t! Stop lying! Go **AWAY!**_

Nico swallows and fidgets with his ring. “Thank...you.”

By the time he looks up, Percy is gone.

Stranger still, Nico doesn’t miss him.

* * *

Jason is a conundrum.

He’s constantly dragging Nico out of his cabin to do the randomest things. Spar. Hike through the woods. “Hang out.”

But when Nico brushes him off, when he’s having the kind of day that makes his head pound and vision blur from an overload of bad memories, when he really tells Jason _no_ , he backs off. Completely, and without question.

Nico doesn’t understand it.

* * *

Nico likes Jason’s scars.

He’s still got a furrow through his hair from that bullet, and he wears it proudly. When he’s sparring, his shirt thrown to the side, Nico can’t stop his gaze from drifting to the faint stab wound nestled in the hard planes of his abdomen.

When Jason laughs at something, he throws his head back, the sun glinting off his glasses and making the small scar on his lip glow gold.

It makes Nico feel...strange. More whole, almost. Like if the golden boy can be covered in imperfections that only make him more beautiful, then maybe there’s a future for Nico, too.

* * *

There’s a trick of the light, or a trick of the mind, and for a second, Nico thinks his hands are see-through again.

His brain whites out, a little.

He thinks.

He’s not sure of anything right now.

* * *

  
Nico’s in the woods near the camp, where the rest of them always go to play capture the flag.

But he feels warm. Safe.

The sunlight isn’t too bright here. The trees block out the worst of it, and the few beams of warmth that make their way through the dappled protection of the branches above doesn’t seem threatening at all.

It takes him much longer than it should to realize that there are arms wrapped around his chest.

He looks down at them with a severely detached interest. This person could be a threat, could be about to end Nico’s life once and for all. He’s not concerned about that.

There are words being murmured in his ear.

“...trunk of olive,” says the voice, “grew like a pillar on the building plot. And I laid our bedroom ‘round that tree, lined up the stone walls, built the walls and roof, gave it a doorway and smooth-fitting doors…”

The rumble of Jason’s voice warms Nico to the core.

“Then I lopped off the silvery leaves and branches, hewed and shaped that stump from the roots up into a bedpost, dried it, let it serve as a model for the rest…”

Nico’s eyes fall shut, lazily, and his mind conjures up the image Jason’s describing without his permission.

“I planed them all,” Jason continues, “inlaid them all with silver, gold, and ivory, and stretched a bed between- a pliant web of oxhide thongs, dyed crimson.”

Nico starts giggling.

Jason presses his cheek to the side of Nico’s face. Nico seems to be sitting in his lap, with his back to Jason’s front. Jason’s pants are going to be filthy from the ground. This only makes him laugh harder.

“What?” Jason asks, soft.

Nico stops long enough to say, “Oxhide _thongs_?”

Jason pokes him in the ribs, much too soft to hurt. “I’m doing my best here.”

Nico reaches up to his face, and finds it wet. He was crying, and he doesn’t even remember it.

“You feeling better?” Jason asks, still not moving, still holding Nico in his lap like it means nothing, sitting on the dirt and listening to the birds chirp.

“Did I…?” Nico trails off, not sure what to ask.

Jason’s thumb is moving up and down Nico’s forearm in a soothing, repetitive motion. Nico wonders if Jason knows he’s doing it.

“Are we…?”

“Yes,” Jason says, immediately, without any hesitation. “Yes.”

“Piper?” Nico croaks, unable to organize his thoughts enough to formulate a real question.

Jason plants a soft kiss on Nico’s left temple. It makes Nico’s whole body shudder, but not in a bad way.

He’s never felt like this before.

“It’s you,” Jason says, still so, so soft, his voice deep and gravelly. “You, Nico. Nobody else.”

Nico’s muscles are heavy with exhaustion, but he makes himself clamber off Jason’s lap. He turns to look at him, his creased eyebrows and pouted lips and gorgeous scar and crooked, crooked glasses.

When Nico reaches out, this time, it’s not to straighten them.

* * *

He walks with a skip in his step for weeks, months afterward. Not just because of the steady presence at his side, or the steadier hand in his. But because he can say with certainty that he knows exactly what the scar on Jason Grace’s lip tastes like.

It tastes like hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this all on looseleaf in one sitting because I'm a certifiable lunatic. Hope you enjoyed, and love these two as much as I do.
> 
> Buy me a coffee (or hot chocolate) on ko-fi if you like! https://ko-fi.com/mikripetra


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